Year 2 – Week 12 – What is Value?

The regard that something is held to deserve; the importance, worth, or usefulness of something:

No, this is not an English lesson! As you may or may not know, I am moving from my current residence in Cape Town, South Africa to a tiny sea-side town called Onrusrivier which is near to Hermanus (150 kms from Cape Town). See the link to a map in Year 2 – Week 9 for a visual idea of where I am moving to. The Onrus home is a holiday home that is now being turned into permanent residence and building work is involved – messy! The Onrus home is also fully furnished. So …. we have a fully furnished home that we are moving to another fully furnished home. As you can imagine there is loads of sorting out and decision-making involved. What to keep and what to sell? Aaaaahhhh ….. have you ever tried selling antique furniture? These are some of the answers one receives: “your furniture is not in demand at the moment”; “young people do not want antique furniture and young people are our target market”! Even an auction house that was approached was not interested. You are probably thinking: “when is this blog going to mean something about the Virtual industry?” Here we go.

I found a little shop that sells antique furniture that absolutely loved the furniture I was selling – in fact I could have sold one of my pieces twice! The reason for this is that the furniture has a history. It belonged to a farm which used to be situated in the hills of Bellville in the northern suburbs of Cape Town and used to belong to a prominent family. When the owners of the shop heard this, they said “we love the VALUE that the history brings to your furniture”.

Furniture can be just that – “furniture”! When there is a story attached or significance is placed on it, then it becomes something of VALUE and not just a piece of old furniture.

What gives a Virtual Assistant value? Why should a client choose one Virtual Assistant over another? They are either looking for rock bottom rates or they see something in your website they can relate to or possibly the brief chat you had at your networking event made an impression on them. Once you have been working with a client for a short time, they realise that you are adding VALUE to their business. You then become the one thing your client cannot do without.

Value is an indefinable “something” that can be placed on “anything” (those are my words and not a quote) – in our case let’s ask ourselves about our own business: “What Value am I bringing to my clients”?

“Try not to become a man of success. Rather become a man of value.” ― Albert Einstein